The most unsuspicious and confiding of men, Dr Wagner here remarks, will become mistrustful, and prone to suspect evil, before he has been long a resident or rambler in the East, and will acquire a habit of constant caution and vigilance in a country where all classes, from the Pasha to the horse-keeper, lay themselves out to plunder and overreach Europeans. The Doctor had been for three years wandering in Oriental lands, where he had encountered some perils and innumerable attempts at imposition. He was much upon his guard, and kept a sharp eye upon his hyena-looking guide, especially when the latter, under pretence of conducting him to quarters for the night, struck off from the road, and led him over crag and fell, through rain and darkness, into a wild, cut-throat district, where he every moment expected to be handed over to the gentle mercies of a band of Kourd brigands. Putting a pistol to the fellow’s ugly head, the Doctor swore he would shoot him at the first sign of treachery. The Turk said nothing, but presently—“Here is the village,” he quietly remarked, as he led the drenched travellers round the angle of a mass of rock, whence they perceived the lights of the village of Massat, where Hamilton had passed a night some years previously, and where they soon were comfortably seated by a fire, and supping on a very tolerable pilau; whilst Dr Wagner was fain to atone for his ill-founded suspicions by a double _bakshish_ to his uncouth but trustworthy guide. The next day, the Doctor, whilst riding over the mountains with loaded pistols in his belt, and a double gun across his shoulders, fell over a precipice nearly a hundred feet high. The soil of a narrow ledge, softened by the rain, had given way under his horse’s feet. Man and beast rolled over and over five or six times in the course of the descent. Fortunately there were no rocks in the way—nothing but soft earth. They reached the bottom bruised and bleeding, but without broken bones, and were able to continue their march.